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2016-03-14

In a Year With 13 Moons

In a Year With 13 Moons
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)

This drama follows the last few days
in the life of Elvira (formerly Erwin) Weisshaupt. Years before, Erwin told a
co-worker, Anton, that he loved him. "Too bad, you aren't a woman,"
he replied. Erwin took Anton at his word. Trying to salvage something from the
wreckage love has made of his life, he now hopes that Anton will not reject him
again.

Following the
suicide of his lover Armin Meier,
film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder has written, directed, and photographed
his most personal and an intense film with In
a Year with 13 Moons. It was only the second time that Fassbinder shot one
of his films and it resulted in a beautiful dark film about some of the most
recurrent themes of his filmography; love, affection, desire, victims and
oppressors.

Here, the
victim is Elvira (Volker Spengler)
who went to Casablanca to get a surgery to pass from Erwin, a man, to Elvira a
woman. Following his great crush for Anton Saitz (Gottfried John) he decided to become a woman. However, Anton is the
perfect kind of oppressor that populates Fassbinder’s films and is a real
estate rich man that represents capitalism and people that exploit the
sensitively weak.

Structured as
a spiritual quest, the film goes from the location where Elvira met Anton, the
slaughterhouse in a scene that reminded me of Georges Franju’s Le sang des bêtes. Then, Elvira goes at
the orphanage and talks to a sister (Fassbinder’s mother) that explain her
childhood. We also discover his daughter and former wife. It is clear that
Elvira is looking for her sexual identity and doesn’t really fit into any life
patterns or gender specifics. Fassbinder sure has put lots of himself and his
personal path into his heroine.

There’s a
touch into every Fassbinder film that is so personal, raw, and passionate that
I am always surprised how I am very fond of his films. It is probable that In a Year With 13 Moons is one of his
most personal film. Just as I personally love and cherish Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining,
also the director’s most personal film, I think that it is not really
considered as his masterpiece just as In
a Year With 13 Moons might not be the Fassbinder masterpiece but one of his
most important examples of sheer talent in storytelling and visual wizardry.